Course types

Interview with his Excellency Mr. Anders Bengtcen, The Ambassador of Sweden in Romania

His Excellency Mr. Anders Bengtcen, the Ambassador of Sweden, who will be concluding his mandate in August, talks about his experience of learning Romanian with International House and the way he sees Romania after living here for almost 4 years.

THE METHOD INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

The method International House has been using since its beginning and which makes us unique on the Romanian as a Foreign Language market is based on the exclusive use of Romanian during the teaching process. Therefore, no intermediary language is used, which makes for a fast and extremely efficient way of learning. The use of stimulating visual and audio course materials serves to permanently expose the student to the language in its naturally occurring form. First and foremost, International House emphasises the benefits of conversation, thus encouraging and challenging students to express themselves more in order to become efficient and proficient language users in a short period of time. Our goal is to make our students become better able to communicate fluently in everyday life, but we also adapt our courses to the specific needs of each individual student (e.g. specialised language: business, diplomacy etc.)

In choosing a course for the foreign managers, the HR manager must firstly take into account the teacher’s capacity to design an attractive and motivating course for the participant in question. Unfortunately, we have often encountered expats who complained that their previous trainers hadn’t managed to teach them our language in a more attractive manner – studying a relatively difficult foreign language (such as Romanian, especially for the expats whose native language is not of Latin origin) in a dull way, with an excessive focus on grammar, can be too tedious. Thus, the lessons for the expat are not as useful as expected if his interest is lost within the first two sessions. „Happy learners are effective learners” – it’s the motto which guides the teachers at International House in preparing and teaching a lesson of Romanian language. How do we motivate a top-level manager to study our language, how do we design a lesson which has this effect: “Cool, when is the next lesson?”

The general characteristics of a Romanian language course:

The length of a course module: 60 hours;

The length of a course session: 1h 30 min or 2h;

Number of sessions per week: two (in the case of intensive courses, the schedule can be modified);

The time interval corresponding to completing a course module: depending on the length of the course session and its frequency, a module can last between two weeks and five months.

The location where the course takes place: at the client’s head office or at the IH Executive Center in the Tineretului area;

At the end of the course, every student will receive a certificate which attests the completion of a module, or a diploma after successfully completing a level.